"But he hasn't done anything yet!" That sentence was on the lips of skeptics the minute they heard that President Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The doubters are wrong. Obama has already restored humanity's hope for peace.
This is no small accomplishment in a world weighed down with terrorism, wars and hatred.
What Obama has "done" is to raise our sights from the battlefield to respectful diplomacy as a route to peace. The Nobel committee has recognized that he is empowering peacemaking by doing a U-turn in the manner in which the United States deals with other governments.
His actions on winding down the war in Iraq, restarting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia, thawing relations with Cuba, ordering the close of the Guantanamo prison and ending the policy of torture have been dramatic.
He went to Cairo to address the Muslim world and to the United Nations to chair an unprecedented summit of the Security Council aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons.
In short, the new president has brought the world to a transformational moment of the same magnitude as the end of the Cold War.
It is in changing attitudes to the values of respectful dialogue that Obama has made his biggest contribution so far.
His overture to Iran was spectacular. He recognized the deep culture of Iran: "Over many centuries your art, your music, literature and innovation have made the world a better and more beautiful place." He urged Iran to discuss "in mutual respect" the gamut of issues that for three decades has cast Iran and the U. S. on opposite sides of a gulf splitting the region. The disputes with Iran, centring on its refusal to halt the enrichment of uranium, cannot be resolved by threats.
Obama's critics claim that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's continuing venom toward Israel reveals the futility of dialogue and that "soft power" will get the U. S. nowhere. But Obama senses that humanity has a shared set of common values over centuries despite cultural differences.
It is this commonality--expressed in political terms as mutual survival --that led Obama to announce the U. S. would host a global summit next April to deal comprehensively with nuclear dangers.
Obama mixes the altruistic with pragmatics.
As his two books, Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, reveal, he has a profound understanding of the culture of peace: respect for the dignity and human rights of all and rejection of violence.
And he pursues al-Qaida through continuing the Afghan war, to the disappointment of those who hold that there is no military solution in Afghanistan.
Perhaps the world will still have to endure yet more wars, more religious extremism, and a wave of nuclear proliferation.
Obama, as he recognized in his post-Nobel remarks, cannot bring peace by himself. He needs tremendous international as well as domestic support to fulfil his agenda.
The Nobel Prize gives a momentum to that agenda.
The forces of nature, business, communications and world politics are building up a single society. The chief characteristics of this society are its common humanity and the need for common law.
Opinion about the human condition is developing a common view that we must do a better job of governing the planet.
This may be due to fear -- of a global catastrophe caused by terrorists, a nuclear war or the rising of the oceans from global warming.
But it may also be that an awakened view of the need for a more harmonious planet is indeed taking hold.
Obama is calling us to probe and challenge existing world systems.
Obama's opponents, who understand all too well the direction he is heading in, will try to destroy him; that is the fate of prophets.
As an operating politician, he will doubtless have to take a step back for every two forward.
But what he has done, early in his tenure, is to change hope from a noun to a verb. Obama's hope activates millions around the world in the search for peace and provides a pathway from vision to reality.
Hope, weaving itself like an essential thread through thoughts and experiences that drive improvements to the human condition, is the great motivator.
The bigger we dream, the stronger the hope.
Not done anything?Yes, he has. He has raised humanity's hopes.
One could almost feel the Nobel committee's desire to give him more strength to advance nuclear disarmament, protect the environment, help the poor and solidify human rights.
I, as one person, feel empowered by Obama's Nobel Prize.
Douglas Roche is a former Canadian Senator, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN for disarmament, and author of Creative Dissent: A Politician's Struggle for Peace (Novalis, 2008).
